#1006 - Jordan Peterson & Bret Weinstein

Joe Rogan (0:00)

Getting bigger, but the video part is getting to a larger percentage. Three, two, one.

Gentlemen, we're live, here we go. Jordan Peterson, Bret Weinstein. How are you guys?

Bret Weinstein (0:12)

Doing very well.

Joe Rogan (0:13)

Thanks for coming in.

Bret Weinstein (0:14)

It's good to be here.

Joe Rogan (0:14)

I'm excited to have you in.

Jordan Peterson (0:16)

Hey, should be fun.

Joe Rogan (0:16)

Look at you, you're spiffy. You make us look very schlubby. What are you doing?

Jordan Peterson (0:21)

What can I say, man? I only brought a limited number of clothes.

Joe Rogan (0:25)

Well, good move, you look great. And good to see you guys, both of you.

And so whose idea was it to do this, first of all?

Jordan Peterson (0:32)

So just, I think it was, I think it was Bret's.

Bret Weinstein (0:35)

Yeah, I saw a tweet of Jordan's about, or maybe it wasn't a tweet. I did see a YouTube clip that somebody tweeted. I don't know if it was you, your perspective on Hitler. And your argument was that he was actually even far worse than his reputation would lead us to believe.

And it's funny, it harkens back to my first evolutionary project as an undergraduate. I was working with Bob Trivers, who's one of the leading evolutionary minds of the 20th century. I was lucky enough to have him as an undergraduate advisor.

Joe Rogan (1:09)

Pull the sucker right up to your face because you're going to turn sideways because we're looking at each other. Next to each other, yeah, yeah.

Bret Weinstein (1:15)

Okay, so anyway, I did a project with Bob on analyzing the Holocaust from an evolutionary perspective. I wanted to test the question about whether, at the time, it was commonplace for people to say that Hitler was crazy, and there was something that bothered me about that analysis. I think there's something actually dangerous that we dismiss somebody like Hitler as crazy before we understand actually what they're up to. So when I saw your video clip, I thought it would be worth having a discussion so that we could figure out what perspective makes sense.

Joe Rogan (1:51)

That sounds like an awesome topic, but before we get to that, I would really like to know what's going on with you because you're at the center of this crazy controversy of Evergreen State College.

You essentially left the area. You're suing the college now. So where do you stand now?

Bret Weinstein (2:10)

We have not yet filed suit, and in fact, I can't talk about what took place inside the negotiation, but we had our first sit down with the college yesterday, and this was an attempt to avert a suit.

But I will say from where I sit, as hard as this is to believe, it appears that the college has learned nothing from this episode and that it is doubling down on the same foolish sets of beliefs and assumptions that got it into trouble in the first place. So that is not a hopeful situation.

Joe Rogan (2:46)

No, and for anybody that's not aware of what this whole story is about, you would either have to go back to Bret's podcast that we did a few months back, or please just Google Evergreen State University and Google Bret and you will be blown away by the insanity. It's social justice warrior gone amok. The whole campus, kids patrolling the campus with baseball bats.

I mean, the whole thing is just completely bananas. The president of the university being told by the children not to use his hands when he's speaking because it's a microaggression. So he puts his hands down, the children start cheering and laughing. They don't realize they're being played. The whole thing is just some crazy grand game by the children. And I'm calling them children. I don't give a fuck how old they are.

To have power over people. I mean, it's essentially what this is all boiling down to. And you really see it in that moment where they tell him to put his hands down and he does, and they laugh and cheer and think it's amazing.

Jordan Peterson (3:42)

Well, you know, they're educated to do that to some degree because one of the tenants of the postmodernism that they're being spoon-fed is that there's no such, there's nothing but power.

That's the only thing that mediates relationships between people because there's no real world.

Everything's a social construct and it's a landscape of conflict between groups. That's the postmodern world. And the only actual means of expression is power. That's why the postmodernists make the claim constantly that the patriarchy is a corrupt institution because they look at hierarchical organizations and they're stratified. Obviously, there's people at the top and people at the bottom. The only reason that there are people at the top is because they dominate by power. There's no philosophy of authority or competence. That's all gone. And if you're cynical about that sort of thing, and you should be, you might say that part of the reason that the only thing that the postmodernists believe in is power is because that helps them justify their arbitrary use of it under any circumstances whatsoever. And I think that's right. I think that's exactly what happens. So it's not surprising that you see this manifested in mob-like behaviour of the students. It's right in accordance with everything they're being taught.